Reader's question: I really wish I could find a way to help my brother Bill. He lost his job over a year ago when the company he worked for went bankrupt and he's been out on the street ever since."

Could you explain “out on the street”?

My comments:

It’s simply another colloquial description of the unemployed. The unemployed are sometimes described as tramps – does this ring a bell? Tramps, you see, are “out on the street” a lot, moving from place to place looking for a job or, worse, begging for food. Bill has lost his job. He’s unemployed. He’s jobless. He’s out on the street. He’d be called a tramp if he stopped looking for jobs and began begging for food.

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

Zhang Xin has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.